I am reading a very interesting book on optimism…Chasing the Bright Side by Jess Elstrom.
I came across this read by accident while visiting the Humane Society bookstore. We dropped by to look for some Hardy Boy books from the past that may have been donated to the fundraiser. Our grandson loves to read and his dad (our son Mark) read many of the series when he was a kid. For all these years, those books have been toted around through many moves and safely stored to pass back to him for his boys. We thought we had the whole series, but lo-and-behold, I think there are over a hundred written so we were trying to find some of the ones to fill in the gap.
Some may say, why bother?
Personally, I have an affinity for books. Stories are timeless and I prefer to read them on paper rather than through an electronic device. Old books that we have read hold a sense of nostalgia and charm that say a lot about the person we are, our likes…fiction, history, reality, self-help, interests, etc.
So, back to the book.
I usually see myself as an optimistic person, as well as sort of a realist (with lots of hope and faith), somewhat of an oxymoron I think. Anyways, I am not too deep into the book yet but within the first few chapters, I am already stirred to embrace the possibilities in life, something I thought I have been doing all these years.
It seems, as we age many don’t want to even attempt to look for future possibilities…the ‘what ifs?’ in life. For me, I’m just pointing the finger back at myself.
What if I had said ‘yes’ to doing something I didn’t know how to do and embraced the opportunity, rather than saying ‘no, I am not interested’ or ‘no, I can’t do that.’ For me, this is technology, not really an interest of mine.
What if saying ‘yes’ to something opened a whole new door of possibilities and opportunities.
Somewhere along the way, we seem to lose the internal drive to ‘go for it!’
A couple of nuggets I gleaned from the book so far are:
“Everything wonderful that has been created or achieved had to start with someone who believed it could be better.”
“Let the wonder be bigger than the limits.”
Elstrom says, “A lot of narratives are told about opportunities that just happened to us magically, with no effort at all. To everyone that has told that story, I’m calling BS. If we sit and wait for something to work in our favour, that’s the only thing that will happen: sitting and waiting…
“Experiences can’t happen to us if we’re not present for them.”
And on this note, she says, “Optimism is about spending more time going down the path of ‘yes’ than ‘no’.
We are never too old to embrace possibility…we just need to go for it and say, ‘”Yes!”
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
